Shoe Box - Finishing

 

 

Half way through applying the stain. 
The stain used here is called  "Ipswich Pine."

Sometimes I think I should write a blog on all the things that one should not do when working in your shop.     Some woodworkers would consider this project to be a simple one, but for me there were those challenging moments.     Whether a big project or small, I usually enjoy building things on my own.   Most of them turn out to be okay,  but when building a project that will be used as an item to be sold at a fundraiser and most likely will be judged by fellow woodworkers, I think I can be my own worst critic.    Take the picture to the right.    Halfway through I was beginning to wonder if I made the right choice when I picked out the stain color.

My third shop - The basement Stairway

      At first I did not like the color.   What I did do was give it a second coat and that seemed to help some.
    As I have mentioned before, I have two areas that I call my wood work shop.   One area is in our garage and the other area is in our basement.    The picture to the left is the stairway that goes between those two areas.    I make that trip between the two shops - back and forth several times a day.  Sanding occurs in the garage.  Gluing occurs in the basement.    Cutting boards occurs in the garage.  Assembly occurs in the basement.

   When I am using oil base products - like I was doing when applying the stain - I like to use my garage shop because the stain stinks plus it is unhealthy to breathe in and I have more air circulation in the garage.  Since the cat has her litter box in my basement shop there is some concern that the fumes might make that said cat a little wacky.  Not my concern, but it has been expressed by someone I want to continue to live with that I should not do anything to harm that cat... (So we stain and varnish in the garage area.)
      
   The next problem is that since it is  November the garage is a  cold place to work in.  I like the heat of the basement shop to work in.

From the looks of this picture I need to
make a few more trips up and down
that basement stairway. 

   So part of the solution that I came up with this time was to work on the project in the basement shop area and then set it out in the stairway going up to the garage area to dry leaving the fumes float up into the garage area.   That actually worked good.

  I usually put on three coats of varnish.    Earlier this year I had started to use a wipe on oil varnish from my projects, but again I would have had to deal with the fumes in my basement shop so for this project I used a water based poly.   I would always put on a coat and then after it was dry I would use some super fine steel wool to buff the project down before applying the next coat.    One of my wood working buddies said that he takes brown paper and wads it up and rubs that over his dried varnish.   I thought this time I would give that a try between the first and second coats.    It did the trick.

   The next difficult thing was to install the hinges.  Getting them centered and swinging freely is not as easy as it should be.    Right or wrong, I installed some handles on each side of the box.    This shoe box turned out to be quite heavy and those handles will make it easier to move from place to place.   That is it for the shoe box.   Color is not so good - a couple knots have fallen out -  the seat boards warped slightly on me - but maybe that will give the whole thing a little character.. (Dreamer - just hope it sells).

What would you suggest for a starting bid?    How about $40.00?